News and Current Projects

• October 2008 - Manchester Geomatics Ltd and Salford GIS Ltd are pleased to announce the launch of a new joint-venture, The GeoNorth Consortium.
  
  The GeoNorth Consortium will provide a wide range of GIS and Information Management Services via a single point of contact, with a particular focus on services designed for local & national government organisations and agencies.
  
  Both founding companies have built their reputations on vendor independence and customer service, with particular areas of excellence in LLPG/NSG Consultancy & Maintenance, GI Strategy and Training,. They aim to offer solutions that are practical, imaginative and cost-effective, driven first and foremost by business need
  
  As Rob Knight from Salford GIS explains: “We have respected each other’s work for a long time and have come to the realisation that we seldom compete despite both companies being based within a few miles of each other. We’re looking forward to working together on more and more projects where we can leverage one another’s expertise to the benefit of our clients.”
  
  Ed Scrase from Manchester Geomatics adds “ … we are both keen to maintain our independence, but the various skills and services we each offer are highly complementary. The vision is that by pooling these resources through a consortium we will be able to offer clients a more comprehensive range of services and a more complete solution.
  
  The GeoNorth Consortium can be contacted on 0845 8677112, www.geonorth.co.uk.
• July 2008 - My Manchester Services launched. Adult services in Manchester have a new Service Directory, developed by MGL. Users can create "Information Prescriptions" of services and activities in their local area.
• June 2008 - A warm welcome to James Cadoux-Hudson who joins MGL this month. Over the last 30 years, James has gained immense experience in the GI industry and as Operations Director at Landmark Information Group. His expertise and guidance will be a real asset to the MGL team.
• January 2008 - Dr Robert Barr, Managing Director of Manchester Geomatics, has been awarded an OBE for services to Geography in the 2008 New Year Honours. Dr Barr has a long record of work applying geographical methods to public policy problems. He taught at the University of Manchester for 30 years and was one of the founders of the Manchester Regional Research Laboratory, from which MGL was spun out. He has been involved in advisory and consultancy work for a number of government departments and agencies including CLG, ONS, Ordnance Survey and the Cabinet Office. He also served for 10 years on the Council of the Association for Geographic Information and was Chairman in 2001. Congratulations Bob!
• December 2007 - Manchester Geomatics help Derby City Council to successfully upgrade their LLPG to the new BS7666:2006 standard
• December 2007 - DNF Demonstrator launched at www.mgeomatics.com/DNFDemo.
  
  The demonstrator contains several examples of how DNF enables relationships to be generated and reused between spatial data from different sources. Each example is a practical, hands-on demonstration of the underlying principles of DNF.
  
  
  
  
  The Digital National Framework (DNF) is an industry standard for the integrating and sharing business and geographic information from multiple sources.
  
  
• November 2007 – Elevate-East Lancashire officially launched their Local Information System ( www.elevate-lis.co.uk) to an audience of commercial partners and key workers from Local Authorities. Elevate demonstrated how it is being used to successfully manage the large-scale housing market led regeneration, across East Lancashire.
• October 2007 – MGL completed consultancy and GIS mapping for Manchester Museums’ Consortium looking at the spatial patterns of schools attendance at individual museum venues within Central Manchester. The work was well received and has helped identify many examples of good practise, the spatial trends of visits, and also particular schools that are not currently using the museum facilities to their full potential. This work is ongoing.
• September 2007 – MGL recently completed Address Quality Audits (AQuA) for Blackpool Borough Council, Derbyshire Dales District Council and Manchester City Council. Each area contained different arrays of anomalies, most likely resulting from the balance of urban/rural features in each. All three authorities are now using the results of the audits to successfully improve the quality and integrity of their LLPG address data.
  
  Read more about AQuA ...
• August 2007 – Directory of Services for Manchester's Older People launches ( www.gatewaydirectory.org), another website based on GEDI. The site provides a single point of access to information about services and opportunities for older people in Manchester and is related to Manchester’s Community Health Information Profile (CHIP) www.healthprofile.org
  
  Read more about GEDI ...
• June 2007 - AQuA - Address Quality Audits launched to help improve the quality and consistency of addresses within LLPGs. AQuA will increase the reliability of your LLPG, promoting confidence in the services and revenue collection processes that LLPGs support.
  
  Read more about AQuA ...
• April 2007 - Manchester Geomatics have completed a review of Research and Intelligence activities across Manchester City Council and have delivered reports covering:
  
  • Key issues and approaches
  • Data Sets, access and delivery
  • Capacity, coordination and leadership
  • Recommendations
  The study was commissioned to explore options for delivering better service based strategic information to Manchester’s Senior management Team.
• March 2007 - Output Area Classification data added to our GEDI demonstrator. Have a look at the demonstration version at www.gedi.org.uk. This data, produced by the Office for National Statistics, is freely available and classifies small area 2001 census data. It compares well with other classification data, such as Experians' MOSAIC or CACIs' ACORN data which are also compatible with our GEDI systems. Read more about GEDI ...
• March 2007 - New flexible map legends released in Manchester Geomatics' GEDI software. Have a look at the demonstration version at www.gedi.org.uk. The new legends enable users to thoroughly analyse their data by choosing different types of ranges, numbers of intervals and colours. Read more about GEDI ...
• March 2007 - Demonstrator system for our Geographic Enquiry and Display Interface (GEDI) software launched at www.gedi.org.uk. www.healthprofile.org. Read more about GEDI ...
• February 2007 - Launch of the latest version of the Manchester Community Health Profiler (mCHIP). Have a look at www.healthprofile.org.uk and read more about mCHIP...
• January 2007 - Launch of Area Performance Monitoring tool in the Elevate East Lancashire Local Information System. The tool allows rapid interpretation of the performance of statistics compared to a user defined indicator benchmark. Uniquely, it enables users to compare how areas are changing relative to each other and over time. An example of the tool can be found in the GEDI system www.GEDI.org.uk.